


Bend down the branches

by vaguely_concerned



Series: Scoundrels and Thieves 'verse [4]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Found Family, M/M, Mutual Pining, Reunions, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-14
Updated: 2016-08-14
Packaged: 2018-08-08 17:29:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7766854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaguely_concerned/pseuds/vaguely_concerned
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I love what they’ve done with the place,” Jesse said, looking around the room. “I didn’t think they could go any more spartan than they already had, but now they’ve even removed the lampshades.”</p><p>“Agent Winston said the moths had gotten to them,” Hanzo said. “He is considering new patterns as we speak, he assures me.”</p><p>Well. That wasn’t quite the way he’d ever envisioned this conversation going, the few times he’d been dumb, drunk and masochistic enough to think it could ever happen. Something about how he’d missed him, maybe, or even simply if he’d been happy - Winston’s lampshades hadn’t figured anywhere in the scenario.</p><p>(The new Overwatch is still in its fledgeling days and they meet up again after a long, long time.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bend down the branches

Jesse arrived when the briefing was already in full swing, because as it turned out it was a _massive_ hassle to get back to Gibraltar from an assignment on the other side of the goddamn world when your wanted posters were distributed willy nilly and you couldn’t use any kind of public transportation. For the last stretch he’d had to hotwire a hoverbike - he had every intention of bringing it back later, but the handling had been smooth as butter. He should get himself one of those. It wasn’t as though he was likely to need a pension fund in the end; better to put whatever cash he had at any given moment to good use.

Athena let him in without fuss, telling him it was nice to see him again and that the meeting had begun. He hadn’t really talked to her one on one since this whole circus started up again - hearing her voice brought back all kinds of stuff he wasn’t sure he was ready for.

“Thank you kindly, ma’am,” he said as she buzzed him in, and she made a sound that, if he didn’t know any better, he’d take for a chuckle. Maybe she’d changed since last time too.

Jesse traversed the hallway at a light trot, opened the door to the meeting room and stepped inside - and then he looked straight into Hanzo’s face.

He’d known that it was coming, of course. Genji had given him the heads-up weeks ago, because he’d always been a good kid at the end of the day. Well, he wasn’t really a kid anymore, of course, but Jesse still remembered him as the cheerful brat who thought dyeing his hair green sounded like a great idea. It was the kind of thing that stuck with you.

(When he heard about what had happened to Genji it had been like looking at his world through the thick bottom of a glass bottle, distorted just enough so that nothing was right anymore. He could never have imagined _his_ Hanzo hurting his brother in any way. He’d be annoyed with him, sure, but if a younger sibling didn’t annoy the crap out of the older one something would be wrong with the natural order of things. They’d loved each other - Jesse might not have seen Reyes coming as soon as he should have, but he didn’t think he was a terrible judge of character either. And it shouldn’t bother him, because he’d left that life behind a long time ago - but it had kept him awake for a week, walking around with no idea where it was he was trying to go.)

He stood in the doorway and met Hanzo’s eyes for just a second, something complicated happening behind his ribs. He wondered if he should say something. Hanzo looked away at once, so probably not.   

“Heya,” Lena said, waving cheerily. “Good to have you back! How was London?”

“Like living inside a damp Tupperware box.” Jesse sat down in a free chair.

Lena tipped her head on one side, as if acknowledging that this description of her home turf was pretty fair.

“Sorry again that the jets were grounded for repairs,” Winston said. “I hope you got by okay on your own.”

 _Sure, I_ love _sleeping in freezing Russian cargo holds_ , Jesse thought, but out loud he said: “No problem.”

He tried not to glance over to where Hanzo and Genji were sitting next to each other. At least the introductions were probably done, then, thank god. How had that even gone down? ‘Here, we acquired a second Shimada brother, they’re like collectibles now’? ‘His brother is vouching for him even though he murdered him that one time’? Jesse wasn’t sure he’d be able to face that fountain of awkwardness sober. “What’d I miss?”

“Welcome, my friend! WELCOME! Winston made a new inspirational speech!” Reinhardt bellowed. “It was most excellent! I for one am ready to clobber some evildoers!”

Winston scratched the back of his neck ruefully. “Well, I worked on it for a long time. I mean, it had to be pretty good to convince everyone that becoming wanted criminals is continuing to be worth it.”

“Eh, it’s not as bad as people make it out to be,” Jesse shrugged.

“I recorded all of it for posterity,” Athena assured Winston. “It _was_ very good.”

Had Winston been able to blush he would have been indistinguishable from a beetroot in that moment. “Uh. Thank you. Um. Hm. We should move on.”

Jesse lent half an ear to what was being said and instead watched the faces of everyone around the table. He went through them in order; Lena looked cheerful, which to be fair was more or less her default expression, and she seemed to be the only one who actually paid attention when Winston broke out the pie charts and schematics. Angela was doubtful but with an undertone of hope that she was doing her best to not let shine through. Maybe she was hoping for a fresh start, one she’d have a word in from the get go this time - he thought that might be a good thing.

At the other end of the table Reinhardt grinned like all his dreams had come true, like he’d gotten a lifetime of Christmas presents all at once. To his right, perched on his three pillows to be able to see over the edge of the table, Torbjörn wore a mutinous scowl. Not hardline anti-omic enough for him, maybe. Mei smiled beatifically and doodled some kind of technical doodad on her notepad - she knew all of this already, had most likely helped prepare it.

Fareeha was trying for a professional stone face but couldn’t keep the excitement from showing. Jesse remembered her as a kid, Overwatch posters covering damn near every flat surface in her room, and he had to run a hand over his mouth to hide a brief smirk.

And from Hanzo he got nothing at all. He hadn’t looked at Jesse since he entered the room, and he didn’t say anything the whole time.

Of course it was always hard to know the expression behind Genji’s face plate, but the way he sat leaned back in his chair next his brother - arms folded over his chest and legs crossed at the ankles - definitely gave an impression of smugness rather than Zen. It made Jesse feel a lot better about the whole thing - if you were willing to forgive someone for killing you, you probably deserved the last word in whether they were worth saving from themselves.

Hanzo was _different_ \- he’d grown a beard, for one, and there were streaks of grey in his hair now. His face was sharper and more worn. Well, they were all getting older - except possibly Angela, who might have stumbled upon the actual fountain of youth for all Jesse knew. He looked more severe, too; his  resting expression had always been that of slight surliness, but this was something hotter and more intense. With all the shit that had gone down since the last time they saw each other, he should feel like a complete stranger.

But he looked so familiar, under that new man. Jesse wasn’t sure what to make of any of it.

 

\-------

 

The days passed and they didn’t see each other much - not really by any kind of design, but there always seemed to be something that needed to be done or something to prepare for or, now and then in Jesse’s case, something to slink away from before tempers ran high and someone started yelling. He didn’t really do that sort of thing if he could help it. All in all it seemed surprisingly harmonious, though - nothing that didn’t come with a whole heap of half-strangers trying to learn to live together. Reinhardt still took too long in the shower, Torbjörn _still_ left those fucking turret parts everywhere, granting a new peril to walking around in your socks, Lena kept casually rewinding herself when she’d forgotten something in another room and scared the living daylights out of everyone.

There were squabbles about food - allergies to take into account, tastes from wildly different continents to cater to, and whose turn was it to do the dishes, anyway, because I did them yesterday, ‘Oh yeah? I did the cooking today, I shouldn’t need to do both’.  Fareeha insisted on getting up at five in the morning to train with her rocket launcher and lift an obscene amount of weights, blasting loud music from the gym.

It made a man feel nostalgic, it really did… and yet somehow he’d always thought one of them would be there - Amari or Morrison or even Reyes, because he had _cared_ even if the expression of it wasn’t pretty - but of course they were all long dead now. They were on their own this time.

Hanzo stayed on the fringes of things, clearly preferring to observe quietly rather than get involved. He occasionally went to the shooting range or to the gym, but at night when no one else would be there. Genji seemed happier with his brother there, though, in a deep, real sort of way. He laughed louder and easier, more like he had as a boy. Well, that was good, at least. He’d had a rough time of it, he deserved to catch a break.  

Jesse did feel watched every now and then, in a vague sort of way - knowing Hanzo he might actually be trailing him around to keep an eye on him. It was touching, really. No one else had ever stalked him without the promise of a bounty before.

 

\---

 

One minute Jesse had been minding his own business, up on the roof having a smoke and looking out over the ocean, and then half the damn base had turned up with folding chairs and a thermos filled with coffee to watch the sunset. Lena took one look at the thermos, wrinkled her nose and blinked back to the kitchen to return with tea.

“This is nice,” Fareeha said after a while, sitting on the edge of the roof with her feet dangling. In the glow of the setting sun she looked too much like her mother.

Winston looked faintly like he was on the verge of actual tears. “It is,” he agreed, absently opening a jar of peanut butter with his feet. “It really is.”

“Softie,” Lena said fondly, punching him in the arm.

“I just… I missed this,” Winston said in a thick voice. She softened.

“Oh, stop it, you big lug,” she said. “Or you’ll get me all choked up too.”

Jesse supposed this interruption of his smoke break wasn’t _terrible_. He tipped his hat into his eyes against the sun and folded his arms over his chest, listening to the rest of them chatting. Angela showed up after a while and sat down next to Fareeha, looking tired but content.

”How’s the search for a universal remedy going?” Jesse asked, because he knew it would annoy her.

Angela sighed, kicking her feet daintily. ”I am afraid the idea of some fabled panacea continues to be a primitive misconception, and playing dumb does not suit you.”

”If anyone can get there, you can,” Fareeah assured her, patting her thigh. Angela pursed her lips against a smile.

”Who’re you calling primitive?” Jesse said. She blithely ignored him.

After half an hour or so Jesse’s ears picked up a familiar sound - footsteps so light they were barely a whisper - and he cracked one eye open to see Hanzo climbing up the side of the building, landing on the roof in one smooth leap. He blinked when he saw Jesse, then froze as he noticed the others, clearly not expecting anyone to be there and finding a veritable crowd. Jesse gave him a lazy wave, and Hanzo made a half-hearted gesture back. He seemed to be seriously considering doing a backflip off the roof before anyone else saw him, but it was too late.

“Ah, there you are! Come sit with us!” Reinhardt boomed, waving a hand still holding the knife he was using to peel and slice apples. “It is a beautiful sunset!”

Hanzo hesitated but then nodded and stepped closer, sitting down cross legged on the edge of the group.

“Coffee?” Fareeha asked, holding out a mug. She brewed it strong enough that you felt it should wake distant ancestors; it was one of the things Jesse liked about her.

“...no, thank you.”

“Suit yerself,” Torbjörn shrugged and poured himself a third mug.

Hanzo got to sit there more or less undisturbed while the others talked,  until Torbjörn gave him an appraising look over the turret he was currently repairing with the care and tenderness you usually reserved for newborns and baby birds.

“I saw you down at the training range the other night, you know. Impressive, but maybe you should switch out the bow for something more modern, boy. Weapons technology has come a long way since the eleven hundreds,” Torbjörn said, proving yet again that he was the kind of man who’d drive his fist straight into a social wasp nest every time without even knowing it. “Or at least get some body armor. One of my turrets would tear through you like tissue paper dressed like that.”

Jesse met Hanzo’s eyes and grinned reflexively at his expression - he looked like someone had deliberately set fire to a favorite pet right in front of him and he was preparing a swift and terrible revenge - and Hanzo’s face gentled into a wry smile at his glance, as if admitting that yes, okay, that might have been an overreaction.

“I appreciate your incisive criticism,” he said.

“It takes a brave man to go into battle with half his chest bared, I suppose,” Torbjörn mused, apparently oblivious to the serious overdose of sarcasm he’d just been exposed to. He waved dismissively. “Ah, you young people will do whatever you want anyway, I don’t know why I even bother.”

“They will figure it out in time,” Reinhardt said calmly. “As we did. Their music is terrible, though,” he added conscientiously. “Brigitte listens to these songs and it is just _noise_ \- like scrambling tin cans and beep boop boop! - even if she won’t admit it.”

Jesse lingered over the understated laugh lines around Hanzo’s eyes, unable to look away because Hanzo didn’t either.

He couldn’t stop smiling.

He shouldn’t push his luck, he knew - just the fact that  they were both alive and kicking after ten years was nothing short of a miracle already, and it felt oddly presumptuous to bring up the past now. They were stuck on the same base for the foreseeable future and he couldn’t offer Hanzo a way out if he wanted one. He didn’t want to be unfair about it. And besides there was too much going on as it was: the last thing either of them needed was more complications in their lives.

(There was a cold, skittish thing at the center of him that didn’t want to ask because he was afraid he’d get an answer.)

His heart apparently didn’t care about any of that, though, because his heart was an _idiot_ that went pitter-patter whenever it damned well pleased these days, like it hadn’t gotten the memo that they weren’t teenagers anymore. Being in love was terrible; he didn’t know how he’d survived it the first time around.

He’d let himself look for too long; Hanzo’s smile faltered and then faded entirely. He glanced away and then, as if he’d forgotten he’d left the stove of his life on or something, he quietly left. The rest of them followed him after a few more minutes - it was almost dinnertime.

Jesse scratched the back of his neck and watched his coffee as he swirled it around in the mug. It was getting cold. He drank it anyway.

“Don’t worry, my young friend,” Reinhardt said kindly, covering Jesse’s whole shoulder with one enormous hand. “Love always finds us unprepared. What is important is to open your door when it asks to come in.”

 _My Jiminy Cricket is a seven foot tall German man with a Don Quixote complex and an involved skin care routine,_ Jesse thought. _Ain’t the world a strange and marvelous place_. “I’m being that obvious?”

Reinhardt made a sound of confirmation that was depressingly full of sympathy. He must look pretty out of it. “You should speak with him, you know. These are dark times; you ought to choose happiness if you can.”

“I’ll, uh, keep that in mind,” Jesse said, wondering if he should just run over to the edge of the cliff and jump into the ocean rather than have this conversation.

“Ah, it will be all right,” Reinhardt said expansively. “Now come inside. There is stew and later I will make apfelstrudel.”

 These days Reinhardt put garlic in _everything_ , but he was still good at desserts. ”That’s the best thing I’ve heard all day.”

The cake was pretty great, but Jesse seemed to have lost his appetite somewhere along the way.

 

\-------

 

It wasn’t that the mission had gone badly, exactly - everyone had come back in more or less one piece, they’d gotten the intel they were there for and no one was any the wiser. Well, at least no one who was still alive. Maybe it was just that he’d gotten out of the habit of working with other people; it was a long time since he’d had to watch anyone’s back but his own, and he barely scraped by on that one.  It was heavier work than he remembered. At one point Genji had flung himself straight into a hail of bullets to deflect them and Jesse had almost had a heart attack on the spot.

Besides there was only so much Angela’s nanobiology could do for the little things - it easily knitted broken bones back together, but it couldn’t take away the lead blanket of exhaustion that followed in the footsteps of adrenaline. He wished he could sleep, but he didn’t feel that kind of tired yet, and so he went for a walk, wandering aimlessly around the base as the twilight fell.

He found Hanzo sitting up on one of the flat roofs, wedged in between the rock face and a ventilation shaft. He was looking out to the horizon, a bottle loosely held between his fingers.

“Hey there,” Jesse called up to him. Hanzo jumped, then relaxed again when he realized who it was. He peeked over the edge and gave a short wave.

“You should come up here,” he said, diction distinctly slurred. “The view is fairly good.”

Well, that made it clear exactly what was in the bottle. “Sure.”

Hanzo had probably just casually shimmied up the wall, but since Jesse didn’t have that kind of coordination he took the stairs instead. When he reached the roof the wind ruffled his hair, comfortably warm even as the sun lowered itself into the sea. Hanzo held out the bottle wordlessly, raising an eyebrow. His cheeks were a little flushed, a sure sign that he had already strayed a long way away from the realms of sobriety.  

“Don’t mind if I do,” Jesse mumbled, taking it and sliding his back down the rock wall to sit next to him. He took a swig and almost coughed - it was strong stuff. After another few sips he put the bottle down between them, stretching out his legs and  crossing them at the ankles. He looked out over the ocean, then at Hanzo, who sat with his elbows resting on his knees, the line of his shoulders loosened with the booze.

“You’re right,” Jesse said. “That is quite the view.”

He really shouldn’t be doing this when they were alone together; he’d always been a mellow drunk. It made him too honest.

“That one shot almost got you back there,” Hanzo said after a while.

Jesse was a little taken aback. “Well, yeah. But I ducked.” It had nearly hit the brim of his hat, which had seemed a lot more distressing in the moment.

“Hm.” Hanzo picked up the bottle again and took a small sip.

“And then you shot him in the head, so I mean - all’s well that ends well, right?”

Hanzo blew out a breath that might have been laughter. “It was practically a party.”

Jesse leaned his head back against the rock and watched the moon.

“That was your first mission, wasn’t it. Should’ve made you a cake.”

Hanzo gestured at him with the bottle. “Absolutely not. You cannot bake to save your life.”

“Listen, that was _once_. And once you scraped off the scorched bits they were perfectly serviceable brownies.”

“Mhm. Even so: if there is to be cake, please let the task fall to someone else.”

Jesse chuckled. “Oh ye of little faith...”

They passed the bottle between them again with the nonchalance born of weariness.

“If I’d been in a movie I’d be saying something like ‘I’m getting too old for this shit’ right about now,” Jesse said eventually.

“It is always sad when you can not use the cliches in good conscience.”

“Hell, usually I do anyway, but look at Reinhardt and Torbjörn. I can’t compete with that.”

A very small smile pulled at the edge of Hanzo’s mouth. A few locks of hair had broken free of the ponytail and fell over his face. On someone else it might have looked messy, but Hanzo always ended up somewhere around stylishly disheveled no matter how ruffled he got. Jesse held his hands loosely curled in his lap to keep himself from reaching out and tucking the hair behind his ears.

“I still ate those brownies,” Hanzo said. “They were disgusting. But I ate them.”

 _I missed you_ , Jesse thought. _I missed you so much._

“All I’m hearing here is a whole lotta complainin’,” he said. “Not very constructive.”

“I am no pastry chef, but you could try not burning them to a crisp. Or refrain from pouring whiskey directly into the batter.”

“Seemed like a good idea at the time,” Jesse said vaguely. “Didn’t have any baileys.”

“Let us be thankful for small mercies.”

“Yeah. They were pretty shitty as it was.”

The silence that followed seemed to mock Jesse with all the things he wanted to tell him, with all the reaching out he wasn’t doing. Hanzo was right there. They were already talking. It shouldn’t be this hard.

“I -” He glanced over; Hanzo was watching him with dark eyes. “I, uh.”

But there were too many things and he didn’t know how to say them.

“Nevermind, slipped away from me. That’s strong stuff you’ve got there.”

“That was the point. But it has probably done enough for one night,” Hanzo added, conscientiously sliding the bottle into the crevice between the ventilation shaft and the stone.

Jesse wondered what time it was. The lights were still on in Winston’s lab, but that didn’t really mean anything - that guy could probably have worked through the apocalypse and not thought anything was amiss when he got really wrapped up in his work. The quiet ache in his bones told Jesse it was time to catch some shut-eye, anyway.  

“Bedtime, I think,” he said, though he didn’t really want to get up. It was the kind of moment you knew would have to end, and you needed to get it over with because it would hurt.

“Probably wise.”

Jesse pushed up and, without thinking, reached out to help Hanzo to his feet. His heart skipped a beat, but Hanzo took his arm immediately and got up in a way that managed to be graceful even if he was a little unsteady on his feet by now. He held on to Jesse’s hand for slightly too long, but then he also looked like he was struggling to not let his vision go double.

“Do not worry about the cake. You have other qualities.”

“Yeah, I know. Reyes always told me I was an excellent conversationalist. They just keep me around for my sparkling repartee.”

Hanzo closed his eyes and grinned, letting his hand fall to rest on Jesse’s chest for just a moment. “Stop babbling inanely and go to bed.”

“Aw shucks,” Jesse said, trying to pretend that everything in his head going topsy turvy was just the booze. ”You always know what to say.”

He was out for the count the moment his head hit the pillow, still feeling the phantom touch of fingers lingering against his chest.

 

\-------

 

 

He should probably deal with this at some point, before he actually lost his mind for good.

 

\-------

 

In the end he didn't really have to figure it out, because after dinner one day Hanzo sidled up to him like it was nothing and asked in a low voice: “May we speak? In private.”

“Sure,” Jesse said, his heart banging out rough and unlikely drum solos in his chest. “Sure, we can talk. You wanna take it upstairs, or…?”

“...yes.”

Jesse glanced over at Genji before he started towards the door, reassured when he perked up and nodded profusely. They went up the stairs in complete silence, Hanzo’s steps barely audible, like a bird’s footfalls next to the stomping and jangling of Jesse’s boots.

“Ah, so here’s you,” Jesse said once they got to the right door, which looked like all the other doors except for a scratch one of Genji’s throwing stars had made when he’d been messing around with it. “Then I’m down the hall there. You know, if you….”

There was no way to end that sentence that didn’t seem to eventually end out in a very premature innuendo, so he just shrugged his shoulders. Hanzo looked at him gravely before activating the door panel.

“Please, come in,” he said, stepping aside until Jesse overcame the hesitation and crossed the threshold. The room was cool and slightly drafty, filled to the brim with moonlight. The decor was as sparse as it could possibly be - one bed, one nightstand, a combined wardrobe slash guest bed slash travel kitchen thing that Torbjörn must have brought back from Sweden. The metal walls were bare.

“I love what they’ve done with the place,” Jesse babbled, in abject nervousness. “I didn’t know they could go any more spartan than they already had, but now they’ve even removed the lampshades.”

“Agent Winston said the moths had gotten to them,” Hanzo said. “He is considering new patterns as we speak, he assures me.”

Well. That wasn’t quite the way he’d ever envisioned this conversation going, the few times he’d been dumb, drunk and masochistic enough to think it could ever happen. Something about how he’d missed him, maybe, or even simply if he’d been happy - Winston’s lampshades hadn’t figured anywhere in the scenario.

Hanzo closed the door behind them and didn’t turn the lights on. There was still something guarded about him, a carefully cultivated distance. “I wanted to speak with you.”

“Well, here I am.”

“...yes. You did not seem to react when you entered the meeting that first day, so I was not sure if...”

“Here I am,” Jesse repeated. ‘Didn’t react’. Really. Maybe he should work on that.

They stood there.

“So,” Jesse said after a while, just to fill the silence. “Overwatch is back in action.”

“Yes. Though I did not think you would be working with them again. The last thing I heard was that you had left. After that it was mostly wanted posters,” he added, the distance momentarily giving way to a certain sardonic undertone. “They never do get your nose right, do they.”

“I’ve been keepin’ busy,” Jesse shrugged.

“Saving ramen shops and kicking things off trains.”

“Every day in every little way and so on. You were keeping tabs on me, then?”

“...I did not say that. Oh, very well,” he said, rolling his eyes at Jesse’s expression. “I might have kept an ear to the ground to make sure you were not in trouble. Or at least no more so than usual. It can be hard to tell sometimes.”

Just like that night on the roof it felt eerily like picking up a conversation they’d only just been having. He’d thought everything would be different; it wasn’t. In private Hanzo still sounded the same, still rolled his eyes that exact way, still had that slight smirk as if there was some kind of in joke only the two of them would ever get.

Jesse realized something and sobered up. “So you knew where I was, but you didn’t try to find me?”

Hanzo looked away. “No. I did not want anyone - I did not want you to see me like this.”

“Hey, I ain’t complaining about the view,” Jesse said.  “And I wouldn’t have been then, either.”

Hanzo’s forehead crinkled with some difficult emotion and he sat down on the edge of the bed, elbows resting on his knees. “Why do you…” he began, then stopped with a small, confused sound.

“What was that?” Jesse said after a while, when it was clear there was nothing more coming without prompting.

“You and Genji. Why do you both insist on believing in me when there is every reason not to? Why do you not see -”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa now,” Jesse said, holding up his hands. “I’ve got excellent eyes. I’m a sharpshooter. Don’t go accusing me of not seein’ stuff,  it’s the one thing I’ve got going for me.”

The corner of Hanzo’s mouth turned down angrily. “That is not what I - ”

“I know what you meant.” Jesse moved to stand in front of him, looking down at Hanzo’s ducked head. “And I meant what I said. I guess Genji’s got some good eyes on him too.”

“Say what you wish, you cannot change what happened.”

Jesse reached out and touched his shoulder. “Hey, it ain’t like you’ve got a monopoly on sordid pasts. We’ve both done a lot of fucked up shit. I mean look at the bright side here - we can be messed up together. Like a club.”

“It is not the same.”

“Why not?”

The years had not given Hanzo a new appreciation for rhetorical questions. He scoffed and looked away, the uncertainty being shuffled under haughtiness. Well, haughtiness was his prerogative, of course; he’d always had the cheekbones for it, but it seemed particularly fragile right now.  

“Hey,” Jesse said, as gentle as he could make it. “I don’t _care_. I’m just glad you’re back.”

Hanzo’s face fell like a house of cards in a hurricane. “...I would not be here at all if not for Genji.”

And ‘I would not be here’ sounded like it held a lot more layers of meaning than Jesse would have liked. He didn’t want to look at that too hard. Instead he said: “So what’d you actually want to talk to me about? I’m guessin' it wasn’t Winston’s taste in interior design.”

“No.” Hanzo shook his head as if he’d just surfaced from some great depth. “If we _are_ to work together, there are things we should… come to an understanding about.”

“Yeah?”

“About our shared past.” He hesitated, then added, “About us.”

Just that ‘us’ was more than Jesse had thought he’d ever have again.

“Sounds like something we should figure out,” he agreed faintly.

Hanzo bit his lip. “I realize it is making things more complicated than they should be and I know… it was a long time ago. And I - I do not want to presume anything. You have every reason not to… Say the word and we will never speak of this again. But…”

Jesse felt like a helium balloon slipping out of a child’s hand at a fair, spiralling uncontrollably towards the sky.

“But I still…” Hanzo’s voice broke all wrong on the last word and he cleared his throat.

 _Me too,_ Jesse thought, because it was true. It hadn’t ever stopped being true, really, a certainty hanging out on the back porch of his heart, possibly picking idly on a guitar while everything went to hell around it.

“But I still feel as I did then. So if you…” He visibly struggled with the words, but he glanced up to meet Jesse’s eyes. “I have not forgotten. And if you ever want to - to try again… or even just to talk -  I will be here.”

It was a stupid idea. They were both about to throw themselves into the crossfire of a thousand conflicts, there were so many ways everything could go wrong - and that was without giving part of yourself away to someone else, someone who could be lost and leave you completely undone.

Well, if history taught one thing it was that Jesse was all about stupid ideas. Maybe he was about to go out and make all new mistakes this time, and that would be fine with him - because back then he’d been young and dumb, and now he was just dumb, and he hadn’t left this behind because he didn’t want it.

He knew everything about not squandering second chances.

“Yeah,” he said, his throat blocked up all of a sudden. “Yeah. Let’s try that again.”

Hanzo slumped forward like a marionette with its strings cut and curled his fingers into Jesse’s shirt, a painfully gentle gesture.

In the moonlight Jesse felt both younger and older than he’d done in ages - as if he’d been fished up like a trout from the stream of time and onto the shore, granting him a moment to kick back and watch the river pass by. He reached out and let his hand hover by the silk band Hanzo used to keep his hair back. “May I?”

Hanzo quirked a small smile. “You may indeed.”

Jesse pulled gently at one end and it unraveled, letting his hair fall down over his shoulders - it still felt so soft between Jesse’s fingers. Hanzo turned his face up to look at him, his features sharp and simplified in the monochrome lighting.  

“I guess we’ve all got a lot to thank Genji for,” Jesse said quietly, tracing the curve of Hanzo’s smile with his free hand. Hanzo’s eyes widened at the touch and he took Jesse’s hand - well, of course, it was the metal one. Probably not the texture or the temperature he’d been expecting; Jesse had had it so long now he’d forgotten it’d ever been otherwise. He wondered what else had become like that over the years - how many parts of him no one remembered anymore, like a ragdoll, patched up so many times you couldn’t see where the stitching stopped and the skin began.

Hanzo touched the prosthetic fingers carefully, as if trying to learn to read braille, but he didn’t move away. His voice was very small. “I saw this before. What... what happened?”

Jesse made a face. “Kind of a long story. I’ll give you the whole sad tale someday when we’re both really drunk. Drinks are on me,” he added, generously.

Hanzo closed his eyes like something was hurting and let his head fall forward to rest against Jesse’s chest. Jesse cupped the back of his head, as if that was really going to offer anything but the flimsiest protection.

“I feel like an actor who stepped away from the scene for too long, and now it is three acts later and I do not know any of my lines,” Hanzo said, muffled against Jesse’s shirt. “And the masks got switched around while I was not watching and someone set the stage curtains ablaze.”

Jesse chuckled. “Yeah, it must be rather like that guy coming in at the end of Hamlet. No military opposition, the corpses of half the damn nobility littered all over the place, one poor sensible guy sitting in the middle of the bloodbath havin’ a lot of explaining to do…”

“Would you be the Horatio in this situation?” Hanzo asked, the warmth of amusement in his voice.

“Nah, I’m pretty sure I’m one of nature’s Rosencrantzes,” Jesse said. “The comic reliefs. We’re either killed off when the last act gets serious or we get to slink off into obscurity once the tragedy really hits. I’d like it to be the latter, of course - spend some uneventful sunset years on a nice beach somewhere - but you never know.”

Hanzo laughed and pressed his lips to the knuckles of Jesse’s metal hand. “I will be your Guildenstern, then. Heaven knows I am a fool already. And if we hang at the end of the play, at least we hang together.”

“Foolin’ around is better done in pairs, I find,” Jesse agreed, then grinned once Hanzo got it and snorted.

“Why are you like this?”

“Dunno. It’s just a gift, really. Comes naturally. Probably genetics or somethin’.”

Hanzo leaned back to look at him, smiling a smile that took ten years of pain off his eyes, and Jesse couldn’t help himself anymore; he leaned down and kissed him, cupping the sharp curve of his jaw, and just like that he was twenty again, the sweet touch of lips trying to learn to fit together for the first time, something long withered blooming back into summer in his chest.

Hanzo pulled him down on the bed, and Jesse closed his eyes and twined his fingers into soft, soft hair again.  

 

\-------

 

“I am glad to see that is one habit you have not gotten out of,” Hanzo said afterwards, when they were lying next to each other on a bed seemingly meant to hold one man half either of their size. Jesse didn’t really mind the snugness.

“Huh?” Jesse said, halfway through lighting the cigar.

Hanzo’s eyes crinkled. His skin was still faintly flushed, his hair in disarray. “Nothing.”

Jesse shrugged and lit up, breathing in a lungful of smoke and then letting it out again.

“Ugh,” Hanzo grumbled after a while and moved his pillow so he could rest his head on Jesse’s arm without the metal bruising his cheek. Jesse grinned and shifted to make it easier for him.

“Better?”

“Hm.” He wrapped his arm around Jesse’s waist. Jesse had forgotten just how strong he was - and he’d filled out with age, too, going from solid but on the wiry side to a sturdy bulk. Fair enough, that bow did demand some serious muscle: Jesse had tried to draw it once and had come away with precious little but some bruised pride and a shoulder that had smarted for days after. As he recalled his pride, at least, had been kissed better, so he couldn’t really complain.

Had Jesse McCree died in that moment, he would have died a happy man, vaguely feeling that all of it had been worth it just for this. He turned his head to nuzzle Hanzo’s hair.

“You really think it will work? Bringing Overwatch back?” Hanzo said, after so long that Jesse thought he’d dozed off.

Jesse took a long pull on the cigar and stared up at the ceiling. “Who knows? There was a core of good in there once, before it all went to shit. Maybe we’re just tryin’ to catch lightning in the same bottle all over again, or maybe we do it right this time. For long enough, anyway.”

“Hm.” Hanzo trailed his fingers over Jesse’s chest, lingering over every new scar and scratch. He paused at the elbow where metal met skin, feeling out the edge.

“What about you?” Jesse turned his head on the pillow to look at Hanzo’s face. “How do you feel about this whole shebang?”

He was quiet for a long time, then said: “That Genji believes in it. That the honorable thing is to try rather than watch and do nothing. I…did that for too long.”

“Yeah. I know that one. Like the back of my hand.”

Hanzo zeroed in on the scar on Jesse’s chest that was all that remained from that time when only Angela Ziegler and whatever god it was who looked out for scoundrels and thieves had stopped him from permanently checking out from the land of the living. “It might turn out to be just another fool’s errand in the end.”

“Then god knows I’m the most qualified guy for the job.”

Hanzo conceded this with a small sound in his nose, and Jesse didn’t even bother to pretend at being offended.

After a while Jesse put out the cigar and turned over on his side to pull Hanzo even closer. Well, one benefit with a metal arm turned out to be that it didn’t go numb with someone lying on it. That could come in handy.

Jesse traced a finger down the sharp bridge of Hanzo’s nose, grinning as Hanzo squinted a little trying to follow the movement with his eyes. Hanzo huffed and swatted Jesse’s hand away, then reached out for it again like he’d changed his mind and twined their fingers together. The dragon tattoo still wound its way up his arm, as stark and as intricate as Jesse remembered it - it hadn’t faded a bit in all those years.

“...I thought about you while you were gone,” Hanzo said, watching their hands. “More than I should have.”

Not for the first time Jesse wondered if things would have turned out differently if he hadn’t left, if he’d never been caught, if Hanzo hadn’t been all alone with his family - but of all the stupid hypotheticals he could be mulling over, that might just be the stupidest. He curled up closer to him, tucking his head under Hanzo’s chin. “Well,” he said. “Who could blame you, really - I’m very memorable.”

“Mhm,” Hanzo agreed sarcastically. “I have never met anyone else who can whistle the whole soundtrack of every major Western movie made before 1980.”

“I’m a man of many talents.”

Hanzo’s chuckle might very well be the best sound in the world.

Maybe it was worth looking into some kind of pension fund anyway. You never knew if you were one of the jokers who got to go home at the end.

“I’m looking forward to working with you, Mr. Shimada,” Jesse said, in his smarmiest voice. “We’re gonna do great things together, I can feel it.”

Hanzo unceremoniously flipped Jesse over on his back and tickled him into submission.

**Author's Note:**

> When I started out I never thought I’d write more for this ‘verse but apparently it’s just what happens to me at two AM now.  
> This kind of relies on Genji’s plan for redeeming his brother working super quickly, which… well, okay I’m a cynical optimist at heart, it could happen. Also I realized in writing this that all I really want from McHanzo is just McCree contributing to Genji’s cause to save Hanzo from himself by seducing him into good (or at least antiheroic vigilantism). 
> 
> PS: I think it’s adorable that in the pictures they’re both in, McCree and Reinhardt have their hands on each other’s shoulders. You can just imagine this giant German knight taking the new recruit under his wing back in the day. D’aw.
> 
> Title is from a Tom Waits song with the same name.


End file.
